Archive for August, 2008

Ia€m sipping a scummy pint of cloudy beer in the back of a trendy dive bar turned nightclub in the heart of the citya€™s heroin district. In front of me stand a gang of hippiesh grunge-punk types, who crowd around each other and collectively scoff at the smoking laws by sneaking puffs of a€oefuck-you,a€A reveling in their perceived rebellion as the haggard, staggering staff look on without the slightest concern.

The a€oeDJa€A is keystroking a selection of MP3s off his MacBook, making a mix that sounds like he took a hatchet to a collection of yesteryear billboard hits, from DMX to Dolly Parton, but mashed up with a jittery techno backbeat.

a€oeSoa€¦ this is a hipster party?a€A I ask the girl sitting next to me. Shea€™s wearing big dangling earrings, an American Apparel V-neck tee, non-prescription eyeglasses and an inappropriately warm wool coat.

a€oeYeah, just look around you, 99 percent of the people here are total hipsters!a€A

a€oeAre you a hipster?a€A

a€oeFuck no,a€A she says, laughing back the last of her glass before she hops off to the dance floor.

Located in Boston, the Davol Loft by HAAweler + Yoon was created by combining two 1,100 sf loft spaces on the top floor of a building in Chinatown. The two lofts were mirror images of one another, organized around a central core and separated by a partition wall.

The new space is was created through the insertion of an 8’x8′ courtyard into the space, along with two skylights / lightwells [check out that section above]. These combine to add a ton of additional natural light to the loft - while the courtyard space also provides an opportunity to experience the ‘outside’ while living downtown.

The most interesting aspect of the courtyard is how it’s completely contained within the loft space. Located off of the kitchen space, the 8’x8′ space is a mixture of inside+out in that it is exposed to all the elements and brings them inside the loft. On a rainy/snowy day you can look out across/through the courtyard and back into the loft, viewing the opposite space as if through a lens dependent on the weather. The choice in materials also aids in this blending of inside + out, as HAAweler + Yoon used reused Tauari [a red South American Mahogany] slats for the kitchen wall - which slip past/through the glass wall into the courtyard and climb the wall up onto the roof to form the deck.

The other interesting feature of the courtyard is it’s introspective nature. Rather than a terrace/balcony space that looks out onto the surrounding neighborhood/city, the courtyard frames a private and secluded view of the sky - with walls high enough [it appears] to block all views of the surrounding buildings.

The other two insertions into the space - the skylights/lightwells - occur in the bathroom. The skylights illuminate an acid etched glass-enclosed shower + bathtub, which both bathe the user in light while creating glowing volumes that bring additional natural light into the bedroom and study.

Additional posts on HAAweler + Yoon, over at our architecture site AMNP:

Wea€™re out there. Walking among you. All around the world. We look just like anyone else. But wea€™re the lucky ones. Wea€™ve got the golden tickets. Come November, we get to vote for president of the United States.

Ruby Wax: Lost American, found in London

An estimated six million Americans live overseas. Wea€™re teachers and aid workers; bankers and businesspeople; students, soldiers and CEOs. Wea€™re George Clooney on the shores of Lake Como and Ruby Wax on the streets of Notting Hill.

But herea€™s the catch. Ita€™s kind of complicated to vote from abroad…

AAAflurry of recent news stories report that a scarcity of apartments and office space is putting a damper on New York City’s ebullient economy. Businesses are having trouble hiring skilled help because out-of-town candidates balk at the high rents and hard-to-find apartments. Some companies, unable to find office space to expand in Gotham, are leaving town. One explanation the papers have offered for the space shortagea€"that the booming economy has used up the city’s available landa€"is laughable, as anyone knows who has recently taken a drive around Manhattan, let alone the rest of the city. Practically within walking distance of midtown, you’ll find whole swatches of derelict property, crying out for development.

So if Gotham hasn’t run out of physical space, why aren’t its developersa€"whose forebears erected the Empire State Building in only 13 monthsa€"responding to the city’s real-estate crunch? To get an answer, just look at today’s New York developer. He’s not Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark, balancing heroically on a steel beam high above the sidewalk, urging his construction crew to work harder, faster. He’s a political wheeler-dealer, whose principal activity is perfectly summed up in the almost self-parodying title of Donald Trump’s book: The Art of the Deal.

A policeman and a former corrections officer say that on Friday they will unveil evidence of what they claim is their biggest find ever: the body of Bigfoot.

Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, a pair of Bigfoot-hunting hobbyists from north Georgia, say they found the creature’s body in a wooded area and spotted several similar creatures that were still alive.

The carcass of the furry half-man, half-ape is 7 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs more than 500 pounds, they say. However, the two are not disclosing the exact location of their discovery to protect the remaining creatures.

Well, good thing they killed it - an animal thought to be myth, shot by some rednecks. Looks to me like a gorilla suit stolen from the set of Planet of the Apes anyways…

[Thing doesn’t look so bad really - just a scary-ass looking bird with short wings…]
So, because I spend too much time online I’ve ecently learned that September is National Velociraptor Awareness Month - sponsored by the American Society for Velociraptor Attack Prevention, along with the North American Velociraptor Defense Association and the United Velociraptor Widows Fund.

Velociraptor attack is the 3rd leading cause of death for men age 27-29. However, everyone must think about the implications of velociraptors: young and old, men, women and transgendered persons.

The American Society for Velociraptor Attack Prevention is a bi-partisan group of professionals, dedicated to the diffusion of knowledge concerning velociraptor attack prevention.

Know the Enemy

The velociraptor is a bipedal carnivore with a long, stiffened tail and can be distinguished from other dromaeosaurids by its long and low skull, with an upturned snout. It bores a relatively large, sickle-shaped claw, typical of dromaeosaurid and troodontid dinosaurs. This enlarged claw, up to 67 millimeters (2.6 in) long around its outer edge, is a predatory device, used to tear into the prey, delivering a fatal blow.

I was going to wait to post this in September, but I was worried it’d be too late for some of you - didn’t want any of our readers getting got because I held back.

I don’t know if you chumps have been watching the Olympiad (as they say in more sophisticated circles). Well, this commercial has nothing to do with it, but I saw it during some soccer broadcast and I wanted to ask somebody this: Isn’t this a slight bit racialist?

Businesspeople with good hearts looking to make a difference usually start with three questions: "How can I give back?" "How do I pick a good cause?" and "What skills should I contribute?" But the businesspeople I've met who have made the biggest contribution usually started with a different question: "What can I get?" As a result, they engage more deeply, contribute more of their skills, and do so for longer duration. #cause

--06.10.2012--

It is thus flawed, a weightless, overly romantic attempt at economic analysis, special only in that it is not an entirely boring read. #weightless

--06.10.2012--

Are nature and spirituality compatible, are they aloof colleagues, indifferent and incurious about what the other is saying? #physics

--06.10.2012--

I'm not entirely sure what literary fiction is "supposed" to be...but it is something that we can recognize when we read it, and in terms of speculative stories, it's a suggestion of internal struggle. #weird

Scientists published their work in journals that only scientists read, classicists in volumes that only classicists read, and engineers in blue books that no one read. So the reference book was born---the compendium of facts, the chrestomathy of passages, and the anthology of extracts---by which the rest of us could learn and use the information that print technology was producing, filling bookshelves that could be measured by the mile. #wikipedia